


Midwinter

by Ori_Cat



Category: Chronicles of Ancient Darkness - Michelle Paver
Genre: Characters of Uncertain Gender, Gen, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, It's a children's book and I don't care, Reposted following reviewal, naming unnamed characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2019-03-31 01:15:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13964193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: Hati prays. He’s not really expecting his god to answer him.





	Midwinter

The pressure slipped into his ears and mind slowly, and his first thought, for a second, was that fog was coming in and how inconvenient it would be once it froze over. 

His second was they’ve found me, and how he only had his knife and his ax was but two strides away in the shelter and that was suddenly much too far and _Torak_ and - 

But there was only one figure, and it did not move from its stance just outside the edge of his firelight, even if he could feel the power curling off it like waves. Only once before, two summers and another winter ago (to the day) had he ever encountered something so powerful. And it had not truly had anything to do with him anyway, just his wife and the child still somehow asleep just steps from him and the being who was the world and everything in it. 

“You called us.” It was a woman’s voice, of course, a woman’s voice and woman’s form for winter, because she would need to bear spring out of it again soon enough. 

He pressed his hands to his chest and bowed as well he could over the fire. “I did not know…” that she could even be summoned, except of her own free will. That he had called. That she would come. Especially not to him. 

“Perhaps not. But you did, nonetheless.” She stepped forwards, silent as a moonbeam falling over the ground, and sank down into the firelight. Bare feet, even in the snow. Leggings and skirt and hands folded gently in her lap - smooth as though she were a child and rough as though she were a mother and papery-fragile as though she were ancient, all at the same time - and the red willow of her hair hanging loose. But she did not raise her eyes, even once seated, and for that he was grateful. He could not have endured that gaze a second time. “What is your plea?” 

He remembered feeling this dirty, two summers and another winter ago, standing out under the trees in the midsummer twilight while his beloved had negotiated with her other half. As though he had no right to be in their presence, not even to think of them. As though every wrong thing he had ever done, from the betrayal of kin to the smallest lie he had ever told, were all laid open to her. He had been terrified, then, and still was now. So how had he called, and when, and what had he wanted? 

The last question was easy enough. He wanted not to have had to choose between dying or becoming a monster or having to flee everything he had ever cared about, and a way to destroy the opal that wouldn’t end up leaving Torak alone and fatherless in the wild, and for the clans to accept him back, and for his friends to accept him back, and for a way to know for sure whether or not he was going to end up going mad from being afraid and friendless so much, and most of all for Ellin. Not for her to do anything, exactly, just for her to be there like she should’ve. “I cannot do this,” he whispered. “Not alone.” 

“But you are not, Hati. And never have been.” Two summers and another winter since he had heard that name, and it sounded alien in her voice. He was not sure she had in fact said Hati, but the word had reverberated into his bones, into his souls, and had called up memories he hadn’t thought he had, brushed against the frayed end of the bond that held soul to flesh, flicked his vision grey-blue for a second, and- 

_-dredged the small dark corner of his mind that would always be burning, burning, burning-_

-and it was that, more than anything else, that made him think that maybe the name she had used was the true one, and _Hati_ had always been false. 

“Is that a promise?” he made himself ask. 

“An oath. We have made one to your mate, and now we make one to you,” she said. “By ourself do we swear: we will be with you. So long as you do our work, you are not alone.” 

So long as he did her work. So that meant not only none of the others’ deeds - call up no spirits, control no creature by force (even if he now had the power to do it) - but also no divination (for that was for the good of the clan, and he had none), no healing (for that was for the good of the clan, and he had none), no “…the Hidden ones.” 

“Are our children, as are you.” Her voice softened. “Your friend is not condemned for associating with them, if that is your fear.” 

It had been. He still had as many fears as there were stars in the sky, but there was no way to allay them all at once. Like the stars only fell one at a time. “And the others?” 

Even the fire seemed to pull back as she jerked to her feet, and he couldn’t help but flinch from the pain of her anger. “They we do abandon. They we abjure in all our forms. Traitors to clan and Forest, worse than demons.” She stopped suddenly, power fading back to what it had been. “But this we have already told you.” 

He nodded. There was no need to say the words from that midsummer again. And ultimately the others would not be his responsibility, but his son’s. He wouldn’t finish the fight, even if he had started it. He bowed again. “I am” _inexpressibly_ “grateful.” 

And she was gone, fading away into the snow and the night, and maybe it was just the turn of the year, but he thought it didn’t seem quite so dark as it had before her.

**Author's Note:**

> Spirit, you are hard to pronoun. Readers, sorry for having to go from “it” to “her” to “they” and back to “her” all in 1000 words.


End file.
